For the under-represented and the misunderstood – for those who’ve always felt out of place in their towns, in their bodies, in this world – King No-One want to offer a safe space to come together and celebrate difference.
“Our drive from the beginning came from trying to prove there’s an alternative way to do things in society as opposed to this traditional, masculine way of living,” begins vocalist/guitarist Zach Lout. “A lot of my early songs were about feeling like you don’t belong to earth, so we want people to really champion themselves and have this ownership over their own identity.”
Initially starting life as an important childhood friendship between Zach and guitarist Joe Martin, from the beginning the pair’s bond was an integral lifeline in a small Yorkshire town that offered few others. Both are neurodivergent, and Zach recalls the difficulties of growing up in a community with little understanding of either’s point of view. “It wasn’t a particularly supportive town or very diverse in any sense. Joe was the only other person who understood me and I understood him; we both offered what each other was missing,” he explains. “Our relationship is more like a brotherhood than a friendship.”
Songwriting, he continues, swiftly became a method of escape. Collaborating as a duo from the age of 11, Zach speaks of the writing process as one that would help untangle the web of emotions stemming from his then-undiagnosed ADHD; “You can get completely lost in your imagination with ADHD. It comes with quite a lot of emotional confusion, and writing has this absolute clarity where what you write becomes this puzzle of what you’re actually feeling,” he explains.
“Because I’m quite a feminine person, it manifested in different ways to your more typical masculine ADHD. I always found that I never fit in at all, and never understood men, but was a lot more at peace with females and a feminine mindset which made me quite ostracised in school. But that ended up giving me a desire to be more flamboyant and own it, which then began to influence the songs quite heavily.”
Along the way, the pair had invited drummer James Basile to join the fold. Having already begun to take the band they’d christened King No-One for its egalitarian principles (“It’s about the idea that no-one is above anyone else, no matter your gender, sexuality, race or anything”) seriously, the then-17-year-olds decided not to buy tickets for that year’s Leeds Festival, convinced they’d find a way to play. A few months later, having won a battle of the bands, they were on the Leeds stage with a renewed belief in what they had started to create. “That small action was enough for us all to have full confidence in us as a band,” he nods.
If there’s a second thread that weaves itself alongside King No-One’s (completed by recently-joined bassist Rob Gration) message of hard-earned self-celebration, it’s one of an equal sense of hard work and determination. Having had a taste of success, but with no financial backing or support behind them, the band decided to take matters into their own hands, busking on the streets of York and building a fanbase in the most grassroots way possible. The money they made went back into the band to fund recordings; by the time they’d put some early songs online and announced a self-promoted gig in a small local venue, they’d already earned a following that was queueing down the street to get in.
“The shows went from 100 people to 600 people in no time, and before we knew it every show was selling out,” Zach says. “York’s a funny place but it just seemed to connect with people, and then that moved over to Leeds and Manchester and London and everywhere we went. When we sold out the [1,500 capacity] Ritz in Manchester we thought, maybe we don’t need to still be busking?!”
Yet though their busking days are over, the frontman credits those early years as integral to shaping the unstoppable live force that King No-One are today. Playing endlessly taught them to be tight and streamlined, whilst moving onto ‘proper’ stages gave Zach the opportunity to lean into his role as a performer with a platform and a voice. “The most important thing is that people who come feel part of something, that these shows are giving them a real sense of power,” he says. “I don’t want to be celebrated, I want the people at the show to be the stars and the heroes in their own stories, and that’s where the new music comes in.”
And so to forthcoming EP ‘Dead Hotel’. Having drip-fed a series of singles over the past few years following 2019’s debut ‘OOMM’ EP, the release marks the first step towards King No-One 2.0. The signature infectious pop-rock riffs and stadium-sized hooks are still present and correct, but this time, following a productive period in which Zach earned himself a Masters in songwriting, everything is souped up – from the probing lyrical world he creates to the ‘80s goth-indie drama that tinges its wares.
“We’re trying to create a little world with this EP, from the songs to the imagery to every idea that comes out – it’s all come from us,” Zach enthuses. “When you listen to that vinyl, you’re opening the door to the Dead Hotel and you can hear these concepts of nihilism and ego death and fragility. They’re the pillars of your typical societal human male all shattering because they’re a construct anyway.”
From the euphoric synths of its title track, via the tongue-in-cheek probe into the fragile mental ecosystem of the performer on ‘I Am Jesus’, via the existential earworm of ‘Forever Young’, ‘Dead Hotel’ is a place to spend the nights until the band’s long-awaited debut album arrives in due course: “a step,” says Zach, “towards the universe” that people can expect from that release.
However, having become the first unsigned band to ever get booked for the NME/ Radio One stage at Reading and Leeds; having nurtured their fanbase from nothing to selling out shows up and down the country whilst remaining completely independent; having cultivated and built a band that really means something, not just for its members but for all the fans that are also seeking something truer and better from life, expectation is something that King No-One are never ones to be bound by.
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